Praying in the Great Omari Mosque elicits humanistic emotions before evoking religious feelings, especially if one knows that, thousands of years ago, people prayed in this place of worship when it was a pagan temple for Marna, the greatest of the city’s seven gods. During that era, Gazans worshiped idols and the sun.

According to Saleem Mobayed’s book "Islamic Archaeological Buildings in the Gaza Strip," when Christianity emerged at the beginning of the 5th century, the majority of the city’s inhabitants embraced Christianity and demolished the pagan temple. They built a church on the same site to practice their faith, under the supervision of the then Gaza bishop St. Prophyrus and with the support of Queen Eudoxia and her husband King Arcadius. The latter ordered 42 Greek marble columns to be shipped to Gaza to construct the church, which was named in honor of the saint.

Two and a half centuries later, during the era of Islamic conquests, Gazans turned to the new religion, and the church was transformed into a mosque. It was named the Omari Mosque after Caliph Umar bin al-Khatab.

The mosque is characterized by an open air courtyard surrounded by more than 20 architecturally diverse arches that date back to the Mamluk and Ottoman eras. The five outer doors of the mosque open onto the souk and the streets of Gaza’s old city. One of the doors leads to an area known as the Qaysarriya. It is comprised of small shops built during the Mamluk era that are currently used by gold vendors.